But I felt it, the way you feel a change in the weather before the sky shows it, and I carried the fifth pregnancy with a dread underneath the hope that I could not quite explain to myself.

Then I was pregnant a fifth time.

And from the moment I showed him the test, he was certain.

“I can feel it,” he kept saying, his hand on my belly like a man laying claim.

“This time it’s my son.”

Chapter 4 — The Delivery